We had the chance to spend some time with Asus’ latest Zenbook S16, specifically the model with AMD’s brand new Ryzen AI 90 HX 370 CPU. How can this machine stand up to the onslaught of Snapdragon X laptops? Here’s our take.
Right out of the box, we discover a real top model. Zenbooks have always stood out visually by emphasizing sobriety and purity of curves, and this new S16 is no exception. All the brand’s aesthetic codes are there, with a few welcome adjustments. The edges of the clamshell, for example, are slightly rounded compared to those of its little brothers, like the Zenbook 14, for an even more “zen” look than usual. The new non-metallic matte gray coating (with the exception of the four silver stripes that cross the cover) definitely has its little effect. Overall, this is a machine that exudes elegance.
In terms of dimensions, it’s also significantly thinner than previous full-size Zenbook Ss, weighing in at 1.5kg and less than 2cm thick at the hinge when closed. The good news is that Asus doesn’t seem to have made any concessions despite the slimming down. Build quality remains impeccable. Overall, this Zenbook feels surprisingly sturdy for such a svelte machine, thanks to its ceramic/aluminium composite chassis. Sure, there’s a fair bit of screen flex, but that’s pretty much unavoidable on a device this thin, and it’s hard to blame Asus for that. At least the hinge is really confidence-inspiring; it doesn’t have the slightest bit of play, stays securely in place at any angle, and can be lifted with a fingertip without much effort. There’s hardly anything to complain about there, really.
Screen
And Asus fans will be pleased to learn that the same goes for the screen. On the menu: a superb 16-inch OLED Lumina touch panel with a resolution of 2880 x 1800, with a refresh rate of 120 Hz, peak brightness of 500 nits, and high-level color performance (100% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut). There’s no point beating around the bush: like the rest of the Zenbook family, this S16 is a pure marvel in terms of raw image, with a vibrant rendering that will do justice to all your multimedia content.
Unfortunately, it also inherited the main flaw of its predecessors: this panel is shiny in every sense of the word. As soon as the lighting angle is not ideal, it tends to turn into a real mirror, which can quickly become uncomfortable in the height of summer.
Another small downside concerns the support for the Asus Pen stylus (provided with our machine). It’s an interesting feature on paper, but frankly disappointing in practice, and for good reason: the hinge cannot be deployed to 180°, which greatly limits the relevance of the stylus. A missed opportunity, but far from being prohibitive.
Keyboard
On the keyboard side, here again, Asus has recovered the traditional formula of its Zenbooks. Nothing new under the sun: the singular layout of Asus slightly narrow and very compact is back, with a power button that may disturb some. For the rest, the travel of the keys is very short, with a strike perhaps a little less firm than on our previous Zenbook 14. The tactile feedback is therefore a little less well defined, even if it remains largely satisfactory. Overall, this keyboard seemed to us as comfortable and functional as those of its cousins.
Let’s be clear, however, that unlike our previous tests, we did not engage in a long writing session on this device, because our test model was equipped with a QWERTY piano – inevitably confusing due to lack of experience. Our impressions at this level should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt.
Our only real complaint is the trackpad. Initially, we were delighted to see that Asus seemed determined to increase the size of this touch interface as much as possible. But after spending some time with these oversized trackpads, our enthusiasm eventually faded. In practice, this gain in surface area does not really help navigation, and more often than not, it is even the opposite! It is so huge that stray inputs become significantly more frequent. This also has the effect of making pointing a little less intuitive – a shame considering that this trackpad is one of the references in terms of precision and responsiveness. Even in laptops, size is not everything!
This is all the more unfortunate because with a smaller trackpad, Asus could perhaps have freed up enough space to integrate a real numeric keypad. It’s a shortcoming that is easily forgiven on 14-inch models, but which is clearly felt on a device of this size.
Performances
We come to the real novelty of this Zennbook S16, namely its CPU Ryzen Strix Point. And if the nomenclature is absolutely abominable (our model was a Ryzen 9 AI HX 370thanks AMD…), we are forced to admit that this marriage works wonderfully.
This chip under Zen 5 architecture with 12 cores (4 Zen5 performance cores and 8 Zen5c efficiency cores) clearly has it in the belly. Despite an average TDP of around thirty watts which fatally limits the potential of the processor, the benchmarks were more than satisfactory: 105 points in single thread and 921 points in multithread on the new Cinebench 2024, and 1880/17,000 points on the old Cinebench R23.
We also get enviable scores on 3DMark; this Zenbook S 16 pulverizes for example the excellent Zenbook 15 OLED that we tested last year, with + 25% on the CPU part and more than 50% gain on the graphics part!
We were therefore able to indulge in some creative tasks that were far from trivial, particularly on Blender (modeling, light simulation and rendering). The Zenbook S16 performed very honestly in these workflows that are traditionally very demanding for ultraportables, which is impressive enough to be highlighted.
Also note the significant contribution of the ultra-fast RAM embedded in this model (32 GB of LPDDR5x at 7500 MHz), which greatly contributes to the fluidity of the machine. Unfortunately, it is soldered to the motherboard, and there is therefore no possibility of switching to a 64 GB configuration, even if this would probably be superfluous on this type of model.
But where this processor becomes downright amazing is at the graphics chipset level: The new Radeon 890M iGPU with RDNA 3.5 architecture is a real atomic bombwith real-time rendering capabilities that are simply breathtaking for a utility laptop.
Obviously, this is immediately felt as soon as you launch a game. Just a few years ago, ultrabooks of this type had to make do with very modest games; this Zennbook S16, for its part, is capable of handling… Cyberpunk 2077a notoriously demanding title! Admittedly, we limited ourselves to 1080p resolution (with the upscaling offered by AMD’s FSR 2.1); it’s not tomorrow that an iGPU will be able to run a AAA title in 3K. But with the graphics options reduced almost to the minimum, we still ran between 50 and 65 frames per second on average… on an ultrabook… without a dedicated graphics card. Quite a feat!
In terms of raw performance, especially gaming, this Zenbook easily surpasses all new Snapdragon X laptops, especially when you add compatibility to the equation.
On the other hand, this deluge of portable power is felt at the cooling level. Even before having launched Cyberpunkthe machine was already boiling hot by the time the download was complete. Fortunately, the front of the board and the keyboard are relatively well preserved and remain at a tolerable temperature; but it would be dishonest to say that the experience was entirely comfortable in-game.
NPU
There is, however, one aspect of this CPU that we did not test at all during our trial period: AI. Indeed, this Ryzen AI is equipped with a next-generation Neural Processing Unit which, with its 50 TOPS, should in theory bring a performance gain in applications that support this technology. The problem is that the ecosystem is still terribly in its infancy, and it is very difficult to imagine a scenario where the user could truly benefit from it at the moment.
Autonomy
As for autonomy, this Zenbook S16 seems to be positioned in the upper average. Its 78 Wh battery lasts a good ten hours of YouTube video playback in 1080p, which is more than honest. In theory, this should be enough to get 8 to 10 hours of moderate multimedia use out of it, which is enough for a full work day. However, we were not able to test this aspect rigorously because of the QWERTY layout mentioned above, which prevented us from using it to work for an extended period.
Connectivity
This Zenbook S16 does well in terms of connectivity, without being particularly generous. On the left, there are two USB-C 4.0 ports as well as a full-size HDMI port (yay!). The left side is adorned with a single USB-A 3.2 Gen2 port, but it at least benefits from a full-size SD card reader — always useful on a utility laptop.
Also noteworthy is support for Wi-Fi 7, with a theoretical maximum throughput of 5.8 Gb/s.
Price and availability
The Asus Zenbook S 16 OLED is available for €1,999 at Amazon, LDLC and Boulanger.
Buy the Zenbook S 16 2024 at LDLC
Buy the Zenbook S 16 2024 at Amazon
Buy the Zenbook S 16 2024 at Boulanger
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